Thursday, April 28, 2011

Thankful Thursday - My Grandma

Grandma at her 90th birthday bash

I'd like to take this opportunity to say a big THANK YOU to my grandmother, Eva. This amazing woman is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge, and has been one of my biggest resources when it comes to family history. She'll be 91 years old next month, and she still remembers the most wonderful memories and stories about her own family and my grandpa's. In face, she's probably the sharpest person I know. My grandpa, Gene Rhinehart, saw me once when I was a baby, and died when I was a little girl. I never met his mother, Goldie Agatha Myers, she died long before I was born. But because of my research and talking about them to Grandma "P", I feel a closeness and a relationship with them that all of you genealogists out there know what I'm talking about.

Besides her fountain of knowledge, she was also my biggest supporter in college and my early genealogy career. She would drive one hour to pick me up from college, along with my dirty laundry, drive me an hour north to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, take my laundry home and wash and fold it, pick me back up, and drive me back to Provo. Sometimes she would just sit and read next to me while I did hours of research. And after all of that, she'd take me out to the Olive Garden and then grocery shopping. She traded her Buick station wagon for a little car for me to drive. And once I graduated and starting taking clients, she would watch my baby for me so I could spend more hours at the library, until I got too far along with my second child and had to give up professional research for a while.

For my graduation present from college, she gave me the Cambridge Glass Company glassware, with the Rosepoint design that my great-grandmother had etched herself, and which she had given to my grandma for her wedding. She also gave me some beautiful crocheted doilies that her own mother had made. She even let me borrow the beautiful brown dress with the suede collar and cuffs that she bought and wore for my grandpa when he was sent home with malaria from the Guadal Canal during World War II, for a Big Band era dance, even though my waist wasn't nearly as tiny as hers was and we both worried the old stitching might not hold (it did.)

She's endured tape- and video-recorded sessions for life story classes and papers, with me and my children, has been my friend and confidante, has inspired my children with a love for nature and birds and rocks and history, taken us on discovery outings, traveled with us on family trips, let us all camp at her house when we've come in from out of town, and been a lovely and wonderful person to know. She still works out three times a week, "pumpin' iron", as she says, at the gym. And she always has cookies for us in her tupperware container.